Getting Started: Why You Should Build a Music Server

If you are an avid collector like me and have a fairly large music collection, you might want to consider setting up a music server in your home. I have converted all my CDs into lossless audio files. Unfortunately, spinning discs are a dying breed and I needed to save space in my living room. Thus having fewer Hifi components or CDs is always welcome 🙂

Initial thoughts

To get started, take any computer (PC or Mac) plus cheap hard-disk storage. Virtually any computer is powerful enough to act as a music server that can handle thousands of discs in loss-less uncompressed quality.

A key driver of the music server movement is cheap storage. But once you have accumulated a large collection of music or movies, you are going to need a solid strategy to manage your media content.

Granted, you can set up separate systems to manage your music, videos and storage. But I find that this can quickly become a nightmare – even for seasoned IT professionals. I have talked to folks spending hours every week just to keep their digital household running smoothly.

I definitely recommend sticking with uncompressed audio formats for a number of reasons. Even if you “don’t hear the difference”. One reason is that you have at least one “master copy” from which you can create MP3 versions for your mobile devices. In addition, you can always switch to newer formats without losing quality. If you have only MP3 quality files to begin with, you can never go back to the original without losing quality!

Complexity is a huge turn off if you just want to relax with your favorite tunes. After all, who wants to update a harddisk’s firmware, manage operating systems, drivers, backups and network infrastructure?

Fortunately, all of this can this be avoided. The solution is to consolidate all your devices into a single dedicated audiophile music server. No more separate solutions for audio and video, routers or wires. And only a single remote control.

Let’s look at some of the major benefits of having your own personal media server:

First of all, you are not limited to just music. You can store all your video content including your entire digital photo collection. And you can record live TV shows with a few clicks. As an audiophile, you are naturally concerned with audio quality. You should therefore generally avoid your media server’s onboard sound card. The smart approach is to simply use the media server as a digital transport which outputs a clean SP/DIF signal. The resulting digital signal is sent to a high-quality external DAC. For instance, the M2Tech Hiface is an excellent USB to SP/DIF converter and perfectly fits our requirements.

On top of that, imagine how cool it is to access your entire music collection using a single remote control, or browse album covers without even getting up from your chair. No more disc flipping. Look up your favorite tracks within seconds or create play lists across your entire music collection. Your precious discs reside in a safe place to prevent them from getting scratched.

You can archive your precious vinyl collection.

I also want my music server to be an intelligent hub in the home that can potentially make my preamplifier obsolete. Digital volume control has come a long way and it is getting better all the time.

Size and capacity are no longer an issue today. You can buy 1-2 TB of harddisk space for less than $100. This is easily enough for 2000 or more albums without compression. Even hardcore enthusiasts sometimes have fewer albums than that. You can either rip CDs and videos to internal storage – that is your laptop’s or desktop computer’s hard drive or keep the music files remotely on a NAS (Network Attached Storage).If you are concerned with complexity, internal hard disks are much easier to manage than any external NAS solution.

With that said, you should still have proper backup solutions in place. You probably don’t want to lose your precious media collection as a result of hardware failures. If you are running Windows, check out Acronis Trueimage. This fantastic piece of software will create automated backups of your entire system. Not only can you restore Trueimage backups with ease but you can also restore individual files. This comes in handy if you accidentally delete stuff from your media server. For the ultimate speed and comfort, consider a solid state drive (SSD) to hold your media server’s operating system plus frequently used applications. Although a SSD is going to cost a bit more while offering less space, you are going to experience a huge performance boost. On a properly configured system, Windows will boot in less than 15 seconds. Your actual media content can be stored on a traditional harddisk giving you the best of both worlds.

Finally, a music server is really inexpensive considering how many devices it can potentially replace. Even a high-quality server (that is only covering the computer side) just for music can be built for about $500. In addition, you can cheaply upgrade its internal hardware to add new features or to stay up to date with the latest technology. If you choose the internal components wisely, a decent media server can be a quiet, cool and eco-friendly machine. You can purchase HTPC parts at Newegg.com if you live in the United States. Amazon is also a great place to shop. They operate worldwide regional subsidiaries to give you the best deals on virtually any electronic product. Local computer storer are also an excellent source.

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Dieter JanssenJanuary 6, 2016, 03:18

I’ve been looking at creating a dedicated Music Server and found your site – great information. So that said, some questions I hope you’ll be able to address (i’m not tech savvy, but have done some research).

Here’s the target:
1. It’s tiny
2. It lives by the Stereo (connects to a DAC and Integrated Amp directly, no NAS)
3. It holds all music, in all formats (m4a, mp3, flac, wav, ogg, etc)
4. It plays 24bit/192kHz without any downsampling – HD Audio Codec (Realtek ALC269 or better)
5. It syncs wirelessly with other machines (i.e. for running back-ups, managing additions, editing the library), preferably via WiFi rather than bluetooth. (802.11 b/g/n)
6. DNLA compliant
7. The operation is controlled via remote, from another machine, Android phone, etc. (PC, Mac or other) – WiFi (Bluetooth isn’t ideal – the construction of my place seems to limit the range)
8. It uses an already existing free music app for management, play, remote control, etc – e.g. musicbee, foobar2000, vlc, etc so I can keep using what they like. Nothing bespoke.
9. It offers 2+1 USB (two 3.1 type A and one type C) for connection to an external DVD/CD burner and whatever other device (USB key, external drive, phone, iPod, Android phone, etc)
10. TosLink S/PDIF for connecting to a DAC (or DAC/Amp). Option for mini-TosLink/3.5 audio jack out.
11. Coaxial option for connection to a DAC (or DAC/Amp).
12. Low or no noise components, so SSD drives. Small fan, if any.
13. Has capacity for 1Tb memory. These should be easy to swap out, so accessible.
14. Includes LAN port for hardwired net connectivity – Network RJ-45 10/100/1000 Mbps ethernet
15. Low power (it’ll be on all the time), at or below 25W/year
16. Video port is an option, but not critical. HDMI?

At the end of the day, if it works and can be there reliably, all is well. I’ll just add that the NAS option is out because audio-over-WiFi seems to be a problem in cities with all the competing devices both at home as well as neighbouring equipment. Controlling via WiFi is ok, just not streaming the music itself. For me, what’s happening is that music keeps cutting out, regardless the size of the buffer settings in any player app I’ve used.

So that’s perhaps somewhat detailed, but perhaps you’ll have some opinions to share on how to narrow this down.

it runs on Windows, could Spotify and Pandora also be utilized ? I now

use an old HP laptop with to store files with jriver and stream my music

via usb to a Schiit Bifrost dac. Having a dedicated server/streamer would

be ideal.

thanks for you time,

James

DieterMay 19, 2016, 21:48

The Zotac I’m using has Windows on it as it’s primary OS. Aside from running an app like MusicBee, it’s also running VLC, Foobar2000 and through Google Chrome it also runs SoundCloud. Given that, I’d guess it could handle Spotify and Pandora.

The way this machine is built, the OS lives on a rather small drive (32Gb) so keeping it lean with respect to apps will be in your interest. Using SyncToy, the 1Tb drive the Zotac has for the library is backed-up to another machine. Any new music gets added via the sync routine and the music app scans either when it starts up or it’s told to. Because there’s no monitor attached to this little thing, I use an Android phone to control it. The music apps have a remote tool, otherwise you’re going to need an app like LogMeIn or whatever you prefer. I’ve had this set up for about 3 months and so far, so good. No clipping, drivers allow for 24/192 so no down-sampling from the DAC.

cheers

GregOctober 25, 2017, 16:04

Hi Dieter,
I would like to do something like the Zotac or Gigabite Brix option running JRiver and remote controlling from my Android smartphone. I’m not great with computers/software but I get the basic idea for these headless systems. For initial setup I presume a monitor, keyboard and mouse would need to be plugged in. What about ongoing system maintenance and adding files to the on-board music library etc.? – Ideally I would like to be able to do this remotely via WiFi using a laptop (utilising it’s monitor and keyboard/mouse/touch-pad) . Could this be done ? … If so how?

Daphile software – is the whole operating system, therefore the only thing on the machine. I run it from a USB thumb drive. Daphile can handle 24bit/384kHz PCM and DSD512 but my current DAC only goes up to 24-192 and DSD128 but then again I have no 384kHz or Octa DSD files so I don’t worry about that. Free from Daphile.

Music files sit on LaCie external hard drives. These can be any NAS or directly connected to the Futro.

I also have an UpTone Audio USB REGEN device between the computer and the DAC. By far the most expensive new component at $175 but totally worth it.

When I put the system together I also bought new USB cables which are ‘audiophile’ but relatively modest in price ($30 – $40). UpTone suggest that what the USB REGEN does drastically reduces any audible impact that ultra-expensive cabling might have.

So you don’t have to spend a lot to get a fabulous sounding dedicated music system, especially if you already have things like external HDDs and a DAC. OK you will have to spend a bit more on a good DAC if you don’t have one already but hopefully I’ve made my point.

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